The websites of various Dutch provinces and municipalities were temporarily offline on Monday because of a large-scale DDoS attack. Russian hacking group NoName057(16) has claimed responsibility.
In a post on X, NoName057(16) says it has attacked and taken offline the website of the provinces Drenthe, Groningen, Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland, and Overijssel. The hacking group did this because the Netherlands provides military and financial support to Ukraine.
“The Netherlands sent military assistance to Ukraine in February 6 billion and allocated another 3.5 billion euros in 2026. To do this, the authorities had to reduce the budget for education and research by 1.2 billion euros,” NoName057(16) states.
Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland, Groningen, and Zeeland have confirmed they’ve experienced a significant DDoS attack, which caused their websites to go down.
Furthermore, the Russian hackers claim to have targeted several Dutch municipalities as well, including Gouda, Tilburg, Almere, Breda, Apeldoorn, Haarlemmermeer, and Enschede.
The Information Security Service (IBD) has acknowledged that numerous Dutch municipalities were targeted by NoName057(16), but stressed that the impact was limited. A few hours after the initial DDoS attack, most websites of the targeted provinces and municipalities were back online.
“The impact of DDoS attacks is often limited and symbolic. Groups behind DDoS attacks use strong rhetoric to draw attention to their executed digital attack and political goal. They often spread this through social media,” the IBD says.
Because of easily available tools, DDoS attacks are fairly simple to carry out and don’t require a lot of technical expertise or knowledge. In addition, the consequences are limited because the underlying systems aren’t affected.
Just last week, the pro-Russian hackers of NoName057(16) attacked several German organizations, including banks, manufacturers, and other companies. This was most likely a reaction to upcoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plans to supply Ukraine with military equipment.
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